International Chair for History of the second World War

All events

The impact of the Second World War in Greece is still felt today. The war has transformed Greek society in a longer lasting and more profound way than most European countries. Invaded and occupied by Italy, Germany and Bulgaria, Greece has put up unexpected resistance, known a catastrophic famine, endemic guerrilla warfare, deportation and mass murder of its Jewish citizens, allied military intervention after the German retreat, civil war and mass exodus and deportation of members of the communist opposition and Slav citizens. Civil war and military dictatorship have frozen public debates on the history of the war until the late 1970s. Issues of return and restitution, collaboration and resistance, Holocaust and spoliation still reverberate in contemporary politics and society.

At the occasion of the ninth edition of the International Chair for the History of the second World War at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Giorgos Antoniou will address these issues in four consecutive lectures. Professor Antoniou teaches contemporary history at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, has taught at University of Cyprus and Yale University and was a visiting scholar at New York University. In 2018, he published The Holocaust in Greece with Cambridge University Press (coedited with Dirk Moses). This edition of the chair honours his original contribution to the study of the history and legacy of the Second Word War in Greece through his scholarship and teaching with the Baron Velge Prize. Professor Antoniou has indeed initiated an exchange between Aristotle University and the ULB, involving shared student field trips to the heritage sites of the war in Northern Greece in 2018 and 2019.